#AAIHS2019: Black Internationalism–Then and Now

Martin Luther King, Jr. (left) and Eslanda Goode Robeson (right) attending a gathering at the African Unity House, sponsored by the Afro-Asian West Indian Community, in London, England, on October 30, 1961 (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

The upcoming fourth annual conference of the African American Intellectual History Society will feature an exciting line up of sessions and we are pleased to share the preliminary program here. The conference, organized around the theme Black Internationalism-Then and Now, will be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on March 22 and 23, 2019 and will foster a conversation among US-based and international scholars, students and independent historians. Over the two-day conference, participants will examine the long and rich history of Black internationalism from various perspectives including Black women’s internationalism, slavery, labor movements, civil rights and higher education.

This year, AAIHS is thrilled to feature a keynote address by Ula Taylor, Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkley. We are also excited to host a luncheon discussion with lifetime AAIHS member Ibram X. Kendi, Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. In addition to the vibrant array of panels whose extensive geographic scope covers Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, participants will also be able to choose from several interactive sessions including workshops on digital tools in the history classroom and on Black queer religiosity, a film screening and a guided tour of the Wang Qingsong/Detroit/Beijing exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

As AAIHS has grown over the years, the organization counts among its members graduate students and early-career scholars. We are therefore pleased to offer professional development sessions on navigating the academic job market as well as article and book publishing. We are also enthusiastically looking forward to the two stellar plenary sessions: “Twentieth-Century Black Internationalism: State of the Field” sponsored by the University of Illinois Press, and “The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution” sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.

As it has been in previous years, the 2019 AAIHS conference will be a space for conversation, collaboration and engagement with the timely and important manifestations of Black internationalism’s past, present and future. On behalf of the 2019 Conference Committee, I would like to extend our sincere appreciation for your participation in the conference. We encourage you to take advantage of the discounted early bird registration. Please visit the main conference page for information on lodging. We look forward to welcoming you to Ann Arbor in March.

*Click here to download the draft conference program.

*Click here to register for the conference.

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Annette Joseph-Gabriel

Annette Joseph-Gabriel is a scholar of contemporary Francophone Caribbean and African literature with interdisciplinary specializations in Black transnational feminisms and slavery in the Atlantic world. She is currently an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan. Her book, Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire, (University of Illinois Press, 2020) mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal the anticolonial activism of Black women in the French empire. Her articles have appeared in Small Axe, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Slavery & Abolition, Nouvelles Études Francophones, and The French Review. She is managing editor of Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International. Follow her on Twitter @AnnetteJosephG.